some reasonable period of time," Walker said. "Seventy-two hours later, he was right back in the fray again. It looked like he dismissed in cavalier fashion his re- sponsibility as a Christian person. . . . All of the thinking pastors that I know, all of the serious pastors that I know, feel that wa His credibility with the clergy across this land has been terribly scarred, greatly diminished. And it didn't begin with this event. It had begun to diminish before this." When I asked Jackson about Walker's disappointment, he shrugged and ex- plained that he had already done a con- trition appearance the Sunday before in Reverend Meeks's church in Chicago. "I couldn't make it a road show," he said. Jackson had made his way back into public life in less than a week. It hadn't been an especially graceful reëntry; but it was a profitable one. The Wall Street Project yielded an estimated $2.1 million in donations for Jackson's Citizenship Education Fund. T hose early, adulatory demonstra- tions of support for Jackson had come in papered houses, but Reverend Walker's angry rebuke in New Yorksug- gested the disaffection felt by many out- side Jackson's sphere. Aside from the consistent criticism of some conservative journalists, such as the Post's Rod Dreher and Fox's Bill O'Reilly, Jackson had long enjoyed a relatively indulgent press; indeed, the Jackson family had relied upon the press to keep the existence of Jackson's new baby a secret. "There are a number of reporters who had knowledge of my new little sister," Jesse, Jr., told me; they thought of Reverend Jackson, "That's a private person, someone who wasn't running for public office," he said, adding that it was "essentially a family issue." But, once the scandal broke, Jackson found himself: and especially his financial operations, subject to an unfamiliar level of scrutiny. It was re- ported that his lover, Karin Stanford, had received a six-figure salary and sev- erance from Jackson's Citizenship Edu- cation Fund in 1999, an expenditure not reported on tax returns. Several news or- ganizations undertook investigations of Jackson's economic campaigns, trying to connect the dots between his protests and financial support from companies 56 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 22, 2001 I SAW YOU WALKING I saw you walking through Newark Penn Station in your shoes of white ash. At the corner of my nervous glance your dazed passage first forced me away; tracing the crescent berth you'd give a drunk, a lurcher, nuzzling all comers with ill will and his stench, but not this one, not today: one shirt arm's sheared clean from the shotÙder, the whole bare limb wet with muscle and shining dinùy pink, the other :full-sheathed in cotton, Brooks Bros type, the cuff yet buttoned at the wrist, a parody of careful dress, preparedness- so you had not rolled up your sleeves yet this morning when your suit jacket (here are the pants, dark gray; with subtle stripe, as worn by men like you on ordinary days) and briefcase (you've none, reverse commuter come from the pit with nothing to carry but your life) were torn from you, as your life was not. Your face itself seemed to be walking, leading your body north, though the age of the face, blank and ashen, passing forth and away from me, was unclear, the sandy crown of hair powdered white like your feet, but underneath not yet gray-forty-seven? forty-eight? the age of someone's father- and I trembled for your luck, for your broad, dusted back, half shirted, walking away; I shotÙd have dropped to my knees to thank God you were alive, 0 my God, in whom I don't believe. he'd targeted. Jackson's weekly television talk show, "Both Sides," was cancelled byCNN. Some of the most damaging assess- ments came from influential black jour- nalists in the mainstream press. Cynthia Tucker, the editorial-page editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, who had praised Jackson for his efforts to expose voting irregularities in Florida, now questioned his credibility: "Well known for his 'I Am Somebody' speeches, in which he urges kids to claim a powerful sense of self-esteem, Jackson has now offered them a model as out-of-wedlock father," Tucker wrote. "That's the last thing black kids need." Jack E. White, writing in Time, flatly announced the end of the Jesse Jackson era of leader- ship. "It's time to give him another gold Rolex, thank him for his service and -Deborah Garrison send him out to pasture," White wrote. "To appropriate one of Jackson's slogans, his time has gone." If there was a time to displace Jesse Jackson, this was it, and if there was any- one inclined to do it, it was Jackson's onetime protégé and determined emma- tor, Reverend AI Sharpton. The pordy; extravagantly coiffed New York agitator had learned at Jackson's knee, serving as the youth director of Operation Bread- basket, and he had taken from Jackson a blueprint for his own career. Jackson founded Operation PUSH, Sharpton founded the National Action Network; the churcWess Jackson held services at his headquarters on Saturdays to avoid the resentment of local pastors, the churcWess Sharpton did the same;Jack- son started the Wall Street Project, Sharpton started the Madison Avenue